


Show Me The Stars

by Iron_Eirlyssa (Eirlyssa)



Series: Eirlyssa's 2019 Bingo Fills [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: And Bad Science, Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019, Bucky Barnes has a crush, Criticizing A Fictional Movie, Flirting, Getting Together, Gift Fic, M/M, Tony Stark Bingo 2019, While Flirting Like Mad, WinterIron Bingo 2019, With Bad Plot, YouTube Collaboration, YouTuber Tony Stark, Youtuber Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 03:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19309708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eirlyssa/pseuds/Iron_Eirlyssa
Summary: With his followers asking him to review a specific movie, Bucky finds that he needs to call in some help for the more scientific parts of it. Fortunately, there's this guy whose YouTube channel he's been following...





	Show Me The Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShinpeiHolic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinpeiHolic/gifts).



> My (very late) Palentine’s gift for the amazingly lovely Kaity, who asked for a WinterIron Youtuber AU. I hope this makes you happy!!
> 
> It also fills the following squares for my bingos:  
> Tony Stark Bingo square A3 - Free Square  
> WinterIron Bingo square N2 - Stargazing  
> Bucky Barnes Bingo square C5 - WinterIron (Bucky/Tony)

"Good afternoon guys, gals, and non-binary pals. It's time for some more of Bucky's Movie Breakdown, where I explore plot holes and lingering questions in movies to see if they make any sense at all. And today, I've got a lovely surprise for you." He couldn't help but grin at that, although it wasn't easy to control the way he wanted to vibrate off the couch.

"I _have_ been seeing your comments, and I _know_ that y'all have been wanting me to do a Movie Breakdown of _Stargazing_. But despite having some mechanical know-how, I'm not even close to being enough of an expert to deal with all of the science in the movie, let alone being able to judge whether it's in any way realistic. I mean, I've read the novelization of the movie, but that's even _less_ interested in trying to explain any of the technical aspects of _Stargazing_. Which means... I brought in a guest to help out here!

"Everyone, please welcome Tony, from Tony Talks Science!" It took all of his effort to focus on the introduction, rather than the man who was sitting down beside him, close enough that he could almost _feel_ his warmth. "His channel is linked below, and I'd definitely recommend it - he does great at making science _comprehensible_."

Tony waved at the camera, his regular ever-bright grin on his face. His eyes were practically glowing with his enthusiasm, as they usually did, and Bucky had to try very hard not to get too distracted. But really, was it any wonder that Bucky kept getting lost in them whenever watching Tony’s vids?

“Thank you for having me today, all of you out there and Bucky over here,” Tony started cheerfully, nodding at the camera and then at Bucky himself. It kind of made his heart feel like it skipped a beat, and he was aware that he needed to get himself into the game if he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of the guy he might idolize a little (and _no_ , Steve, it wasn’t a _crush_ , just honest appreciation). “I hope I’m going to be of some use, here.”

“I have no doubt you will be,” Bucky rushed to assure him, “especially since I don’t think I could clearly explain everything that’s going on in this movie.”

His grin still on his face, Tony huffed. “I’ve seen your reviews of other movies, and you’re not nearly as bad at explaining science as you seem to think you are - it was all very correct and very comprehensible.”

Bucky fought not to blush. “I mean, I try, but still,” he tried to shrug off the compliment.

Before he could continue digging the hole deeper, Tony smiled at him reassuringly, eyes soft and silencing Bucky utterly. “I’ll be honest, though, I’m honored you invited me - I always liked watching your vids, and the fact that you thought of me when you needed to do a science-y vid, well… Let’s just say I’m excited to be here!”

It felt like his entire face had heated up, even though Bucky was aware that he didn’t blush that easily. He just hoped nothing was visible as he tried to get his thoughts together. Tony had watched his vids!

Taking a deep breath, Bucky tried to settle himself. Flirting had come easily to him before, but his social skills had been somewhat impacted by everything that had happened. Then again, if anyone could bring out that side of him again, it would probably be Tony, who ticked just about every box of Bucky’s ideal partner and added on a few more that Bucky hadn’t even been aware he had.

“Trust me, we’re even more thrilled to have you,” he managed, and when Tony’s smile grew even brighter, he honestly felt a little breathless. _Wow_ , but that smile was utterly lethal.

“So, _Stargazing_... I’ll admit, I watched the movie about three times and did some reading before showing up, just to be sure I wouldn’t be telling you any lies or missing out on anything. And oh man, but that movie…”

Chuckling, Bucky nodded, turning back to the camera directed at the couch they were sitting on. “That movie indeed,” he agreed, rolling his eyes for extra effect. “It’s had some great marketing, and was one of last year’s most anticipated movies, but a lot of people ended up walking away with more questions than answers, and while it was okay on a surface level, it left people mostly dissatisfied.”

Cuing his prompter, he started reading off some of the most pertinent reviews the way he usually did. “Which brings us to the movie itself,” Bucky continued. “In general, the plot involves two humans; main character Grant and his love interest Aubrey. The two of them, along with a bunch of side characters who hardly get more than two lines except for comic relief or their dying message, are part of a team off to make another planet habitable for human life - terraforming. In doing so, they run into several problems, ending with just the two of them on a spaceship, either off to try to terraform another planet, back to Earth to tell everyone that it didn’t work out, or just off to drift in space until they die. _Stargazing_ isn’t clear on what they’re going to do, except that they’ll do it ‘together’.”

“Which is adorable,” Tony added, and even though Bucky was still looking at the camera, he could practically _hear_ the way the smaller man was rolling his eyes, “and absolutely not the kind of future planning you need in a situation like this.”

“Might’ve been a sequel hook, if not for the way the movie was received,” Bucky shrugged. It wasn’t like he was any more tempted to defend it than Tony was. “Either way, it was the last in a series of dumb decisions and inexplicable incidents, leaving its viewers decidedly dissatisfied.”

“Ohhh, I’m liking the alliteration there,” Tony said, grinning.

This time, Bucky was a little more mentally prepared for it, and he grinned right back as he did his best not to get distracted by Tony’s expressive eyes. “I do try to entertain,” he volleyed back, a little less out of his depth.

“Very successfully, too,” was the instant reply, and Bucky was _loving_ the way Tony had zero hesitation flirting with him.

It _did_ keep getting him distracted from the video they were supposed to be recording, though. Briefly, in the back of his mind, he wondered how much he’d have to cut out of the footage. He could just imagine the look on Clint’s face if he had to subtitle Bucky flirting for half the video - he’d never hear the end of it.

Still, he had a job to do, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy himself in the meantime. Especially with getting to work together with Tony, who was turning out even _more_ amazing than the image Bucky had built of him.

“Which is probably a good thing, since being entertaining is what I get paid for,” Bucky ended up chuckling. “Or rather, being entertaining while picking out flaws in movies. Of which this one had plenty. So, any idea where to start with the mistakes?”

They’d done some discussion before, including how to set up the general outline of the video, so Tony took his cue expertly. “Well, I’d say we start at the beginning and point out the inaccuracies as the movie goes along. And at the very beginning is the idea that these humans are here to terraform this planet, based off Mars. Which comes with a _lot_ of the same problems that terraforming Mars would have, beginning with the fact that the hypothetical planet in _Stargazing_ has a fairly low gravitational field - it makes for fun images of the astronauts hopping around, but comes with a lot of problems - and a low atmospheric pressure.”

Steadily, the two of them worked through the issues with the movie, with Tony taking on most of the scientific issues and Bucky elaborating on the plot-related problems.

In-between, the two of them ended up spending rather a lot of their time low-key flirting, throwing comments back and forth in a way that probably seemed practiced, but that Bucky was astonished to find came all by itself. He’d known he admired Tony, of course, but he’d never dared imagine that it could feel so _natural_ talking to him.

“Of course, the combination of low gravity and uneven terrain means that the buggy goes flying, destroying it, which could have _easily_ been prevented by just driving a _little_ more carefully,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. This entire movie was absolutely filled with eye roll-worthy moments. “I’m not saying I don’t get why he’d want to get back to the ship quickly, especially with someone going crazy and trying to kill his love interest, but he ended up needing to run the entire way regardless because he _crashed the buggy_.”

“As a pilot, I’d honestly have guessed that he should be a little better at keeping himself together in stressful situations,” Bucky agreed.

“Ah,” Tony sighed, slumping closer and looking at him with unfairly big eyes, “but _love changes everything_ , Bucky Bear. All of his training, all of his previous characterization, it goes out the window because he _lurves_ her.”

By now, Bucky had long surpassed the urge to blush, instead giving as good as he got. “Sure hope love ain’t ever gonna make me _that_ stupid,” he sighed theatrically.

“Clearly, I’m not trying hard enough then,” Tony retorted with a wink, causing Bucky to bark out a laugh.

“You try any harder, you’re gonna be finishing up this video on your own.” It wasn’t a complete lie, either - the longer the two of them spent together, the more Bucky felt like he was orbiting around Tony. His entire body was aware of Tony’s presence, and he kept having to restrain himself from leaning towards the smaller male, or reaching out and touching him one way or another.

It didn’t help that Tony himself seemed more than welcoming, grinning and flirting and leaning right back. And while it _seemed_ like more than just being friendly, and while Bucky could certainly _hope_ that it was, he didn’t want to presume anything and overstep any boundaries that Tony had.

Not to mention the middle of a video was not really the right moment to be discussing whatever was or wasn’t between them. Though Bucky did decide that he should talk to Tony afterwards. Probably. Maybe.

(Yeah, he was aware that he’d probably chicken out. But the thought was enough to keep him from getting any more distracted by Tony than he already was.)

“Which is, of course, when they fly off in the spaceship _together_ \- a spaceship that does not seem to be going at speeds that’ll get them anywhere close to where they should be going, mind you, and neither is it mentioned in the movie. Traveling at light speed, reaching Alpha Centauri - the closest planetary system currently known to us that _might_ be able to sustain life - would take over four years. Traveling at twenty percent of the speed of light, so about 100 million miles an hour, it would take about twenty years - and that’s plans for an unmanned spacecraft designed for speed.

“The fastest actual spacecraft humans have ever launched, the New Horizons, went only 32,000 miles an hour. The Juno actually went faster, with a speed boost from Jupiter’s gravity, and reached 165,000 miles an hour. Which are astounding speeds, except… As you can see in the calculations provided below, New Horizons would take 90,114 years to get there, and even if Juno would manage to keep up those speeds, it would still take 17,477 years. Which is a _long_ time.”

“Those twenty years already seem like a pretty long time,” Bucky remarked, feeling kind of stunned. “And we haven’t even reached that.”

“Which is impressive, considering _Stargazing_ is supposed to be taking place in 2052 - that gives humanity about thirteen years to get to that kind of speed in a manned craft, plus the twenty years they don’t look like they’ve been travelling.”

“What with them being strappin’ early 30-year olds with full university degrees in various things. And of course, as always, it’s possible there’s another explanation for it, but they’re not _telling_ us these people took a Stargate to a different system, so we’re stuck trying to explain it with the things they do tell us. And that’s…”

“That’s telling us that this poor excuse for science fails,” Tony concluded. “It didn’t make sense how they got there, it didn’t make sense what they did there, and it doesn’t make sense how they’re gonna get anywhere.”

“But hey,” Bucky said, shrugging and rolling his eyes at the same time, “at least they’re doing it _together_.”

Tony puffed up, and it was oddly adorable. “That’s not a _plan_ , that’s some kind of failed reassurance,” he argued, sounding honestly offended. “Like a security blanket.”

It was something Bucky agreed with, though. The first time he’d watched the movie, his reaction at the end had been a resounding ‘ _wait, **what**?_’. “It’s the kinda thing you tell your kid when the situation’s hopeless but you don’t wanna lie to them. Or, I guess, the kinda thing you have your characters say when you’ve written yourself into a corner, like it’s magically gonna solve everything.”

“Well, it didn’t solve this movie’s many problems,” Tony scoffed. With his explanations added in, as well as Bucky’s more plot-driven criticisms, Bucky estimated this video was at least twice as long as his usual ones. “Much though, as a scientist, I appreciate learning new things about how the universe works, there’s also some ways the universe definitely _doesn’t_ work, and this movie’s checked off quite a few of them. Or at least has failed to explain its choices in a way that would have made sense.”

“The moment where you neither show nor tell anything is the moment where you’re messin’ it up for real,” Bucky joked.

From the grin appearing on Tony’s face, Bucky just _knew_ he was about to make another flirty comment. “If you want, I can show and tell you some things to make up for _Stargazing_ ’s disappointment,” he drawled suggestively, adding on a wink as well.

Again, Bucky found himself grinning. “You’ve shown and told us all quite a bit about all the ways this movie sucks, that’s for sure.”

When Tony smiled lasciviously, Bucky couldn’t help his blush. That _was_ a pretty wide open door he’d left there, and he was mostly relieved when Tony decided not to take advantage of it. Instead, he just winked and moved on. “Well, I’ve honestly loved being here. If there’s ever anything I can help you with again, I hope you’ll let me know,” he told Bucky, sounding entirely sincere.

“Definitely,” he agreed at once. Having Tony join him had been one of the best experiences in the past few years, and he’d found himself already thinking about movies that would require quite a bit of technical know-how that he could call the other man in for. “Thank you so much for your help - it’s been amazing.”

“It has been indeed,” Tony agreed.

And then, because Bucky was a coward, they rounded up the video and told one another goodbye, and he didn’t have that conversation that he promised he’d have.

Instead, he found himself thinking back fondly on the entire experience, keeping a copy of the video before sending it to Clint for editing and subtitles, wondering what his friend would end up cutting out to make it run a little smoother.

So imagine his surprise when he got it back, edited and subtitled, and absolutely _nothing_ had been cut. Not their flirting, not the few times that he’d stumbled over his words and Tony had picked up the thread, and not the time Tony’d gone off on a relatively unrelated tangent and Bucky had gently steered him back to the subject. Clint had left only one comment. ‘ _Ask him out, you idiot?_ ’

Bucky felt he was somewhat justified in not taking dating advice from Clint, considering the guy’s most recent date had ended up ditching him and he’d had his food stolen by a raccoon.

Of course, that was when the comments on the video started coming in, and not just the usual ones commenting on the movie criticism itself. ‘ _You guys are so cute together!_ ’ ‘ _OMG HOW LONG HAVE YOU TWO BEEN DATING??_ ’ ‘ _Get yourself someone who looks at you the way Bucky and Tony look at each other._ ’ ‘ _Can cut the UST with a knife :D_ ’ ‘ _BUNY FTW_ ’

Which was how Bucky found himself picking up the phone and selecting the number Tony had given him. Because if _that_ many people agreed that there appeared to be something between the two of them, then, well… It might be possible to believe that what he hoped he’d seen and felt between the two of them might be something real.

“What’s up, buttercup?” Tony greeted him with, and it was so _Tony_ that Bucky ended up chuckling before he’d even said anything.

It felt like most of the tension suddenly rushed out of him, leaving him with the same warm feeling he’d had while working on the video together. “Looks like our collab is gonna be my most popular vid ever,” he remarked. It had only been up for a little over a day, but it looked like it’d soon hit two million views.

On the other side of the line, Tony laughed. “Can’t blame them - it was lots of fun making it, and from what I can tell, that shows in the video itself as well.”

“True,” Bucky agreed. Clint’s editing might’ve been a little over the top, and he _really_ could’ve done without his friend editing his blush to be _more_ apparent, but he still smiled every time he re-watched it.

“So you just called to give me an update?” Tony asked, and it might just be wishful thinking, but Bucky thought he heard something hopeful in the question.

So he gathered his courage and took one deep breath. “Actually, I wanted to ask if I could take you out. On a date.”

For a few minutes, the line was silent, and it felt like his heart was in his throat. Then, Tony spoke again, and Bucky could hear his smile in his voice even without seeing him. “I’d really love that, Bucky.”

His cheeks ached from his own grin - it had been a long time since Bucky had smiled this widely, after all, though he hoped that there would be more from now on. “Yeah? That’s… That’s great,” he finally managed to string together. He was so happy he couldn’t even bring himself to be embarrassed about his lack of eloquence. “That’s awesome.”

“I hope so,” Tony teased him, voice gentle and playful. “What are we going to be doing?”

“Stargazing,” Bucky blurted out.

The bright laughter on the other side of the line warmed him all the way to his core, and for the first time in years, it felt like things would work out happily.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed it - especially Kaity! Feel free to come check out my [Tumblr](https://eirlyssa.tumblr.com/) as well if you want!
> 
> (PS if anyone actually does want those calculations, feel free to tell me and I can put them in :P it seemed a bit silly to do so, though)


End file.
